Produced by Suzanne Shell, Mary Meehan, and Distributed Proofreaders WHAT SAMI SINGS WITH THE BIRDS BY JOHANNA SPYRI TRANSLATED BY HELEN B. DOLE 1917 [Illustration: “Up in the ash-trees the birds piped and sang merrily together.”] CONTENTS CHAPTER FIRST OLD MARY ANN SECOND AT THE GRANDMOTHER’S THIRD ANOTHER LIFE FOURTH HARD TIMES FIFTH THE BIRDS ARE STILL SINGING SIXTH SAMI SINGS TOO LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS UP IN THE ASH-TREES THE BIRDS PIPED AND SANG MERRILY TOGETHER. WHERE HAVE YOU COME FROM WITH ALL YOUR HOUSEHOLD GOODS? SUCH STRAY WAIFS AS YOU ARE NOT WILLING TO DO ANYTHING. WHAT SAMI SINGS WITH THE BIRDS CHAPTER FIRST OLD MARY ANN For three days the Spring sun had been shining out of a clear sky and casting a gleaming, golden coverlet over the blue waters of Lake Geneva. Storm and rain had ceased. The breeze murmured softly and pleasantly up in the ash-trees, and all around in the green fields the yellow buttercups and snow-white daisies glistened in the bright sunshine. Under the ash-trees, the clear brook was running with the cool mountain water and feeding the gaily nodding primroses and pink anemones on the hillside, as they grew and bloomed down close to the water. On the low wall by the brook, in the shadow of the ash-trees, an old woman was sitting. She was called “Old Mary Ann” throughout the whole neighborhood. Her big basket, the weight of which had become a little heavy, she had put down beside her. She was on her way back from La Tour, the little old town, with the vine-covered church tower and the ruined castle, the high turrets of which rose far across the blue lake. Old Mary Ann had taken her work there. This consisted in all kinds of mending which did not need to be done particularly well, for the woman was no longer able to do fine work, and never could do it. Old Mary Ann had had a very changeable life. The place where she now found herself was not her home. The language of the country was not her own. From the shady seat on the low wall, she now looked contentedly at the sunny fields, then across the murmuring brook to the hillside where the big yellow primroses nodded, while the birds piped and sang in the green ash-trees above her, as if they had the greatest festival to celebrate. “Every Spring, people think it never was so beautiful before, when they have already seen so many,” she now said half aloud to herself, and as she gazed at the fields so rich in flowers, many of the past years rose up and passed before her, with all that she had experienced in them.